My mother used to make this as a little side to go with chicken or fish. It's very easy--I don't recall ever having learned to make it, for instance, yet I can duplicate her recipe exactly. It's also much more interesting than frozen corn or peas, either boiled or heated in the microwave, which is what we usually got otherwise. Seasoned vegetables! Who would have thought? The basil adds an interesting new dimension to the sweetness of the carrots. Really, when was the last time you used basil in something other than pesto or Italian food?

You need:

A carrot, or whatever number of carrots you prefer.
A tablespoon of butter or margarine, depending on size of carrot.
A further tablespoon or so of basil.
A frying pan and utensil for stirring.

Peel your carrot and slice it into rounds maybe 1/4 inch thick. If you have a particularly fat carrot, you may wish to first split it lengthwise, and slice into half-moons. Don't cut it into very small pieces, or into substantial chunks; small pieces don't have the surface area to hold enough basil, and large pieces will have too much mass for the correct basil-carrot ratio. Math! Anyway.

Melt your butter in the frying pan over low to medium heat. Add the carrots and stir to coat with butter. Then add the basil and sauté to soften. The bits of basil will stick to the buttered carrots and cook with them. You can do the happy sauté shake of the pan, and the carrots will fall all over each other.

It should take about five minutes for you to cook the carrots. Taste a piece when you think they might be ready. You want the pieces to be cooked through, but to still have a slight crunch under your teeth. Think carrots al dente. Good. Take the pan off the heat--you do Not want these to turn into overcooked soggy carrots--and serve as soon as possible.

Lately I have been craving these something awful. I had some last night out of a teacup. It was nice. Yay carrots!